Grief So Like Fear
by GallonsoftheStuff
Summary: After the death of his beloved wife, Harry comes to grips with something he has been avoiding for a long time.


The door doesn't creak, doesn't squeal when Harry opens it and steps inside his home of the last eighty years. Water drips from his cloak to puddle on the floor, a short string of dots speckling the entryway when he pushes the door closed and shrugs out of the garment, carefully hanging it on the coatrack, then setting his hat on top of it with a motion that seems so incredibly final.

His steps slow, the gait of the old man he has become over the course of a lifetime, the Savior of the Wizarding World walks toward the stairs, passing photos of family, friends, everyone he has ever loved in his life—so full of memories, this house. It is not some great distance, physically, from the door to the stairway, nor up the stairs to the second story and down the hall to the master bedroom, and yet the journey feels as if it takes years.

There is a photo of his wedding to Ginny—there, their first child, followed by the rest. Nieces and nephews, co-workers, their expanded circle—grandchildren, everyone older, the progression of his life all solemnly staring back at him as he passes, despite the smiles that should have adorned their faces. Rain patters on the windows, the roof, but the house is silent in a way that it has not been since the day he carried his bride over the threshold, filling it with laughter and love.

When he reaches the bedroom, he sets aside the cane he has used this last decade, removing the formal black outerwear of a wizard and laying it across the foot of the bed. The pictures in this room have all been placed face down, an action he took before leaving that morning, an almost unconscious preparation for the action he plans to take this evening. There is one picture, however, that he picks up, carrying it with him to the chair at his wife's vanity, before carefully setting it up.

His beautiful Ginny, skin smooth, cheeks pink and hair the lustrous red of her youth, smiles up at him, though her eyes are sad, and he smiles back at her, hands clenched in his lap against the wishes he knows better than to act on.

"How was the ceremony?" the Ginny in the picture frame asks, her voice deceptively normal.

"It was beautiful," Harry replies, his own tone a lie as much as his wife's. "All the kids," this label including not only their children, but their numerous nieces, nephews, and godchildren as well, "were there, the grandkids look so grown up. The flowers were just the way you wanted them. You looked splendid. They dressed you in that blue gown you love so much." His throat aches, his eyes are too dry, but he keeps smiling at Ginny, because how can he stop smiling at the love of his life?

"That's nice, Harry," she says, her voice gentler now, her eyes tender, and his heart twists in his chest—it hurts, worse than with Neville, or Luna, or even Ron, it hurts so much—"That's nice."

They are silent for a moment, her eyes roaming his aged face, his own green orbs burning but still too dry—when had he stopped being able to cry at this? It just wasn't fair—but finally, a shuddering breath from him, the mask of pleasantry starting to slip, and his wife is speaking again.

"Harry," she says, and her voice is so gentle, why does it feel like a knife in his chest? "Harry, I think it's time for you to stop pretending." He knows what she's talking about, and it makes him wish even more desperately for tears, because shouldn't something mark this occasion besides his wife's gentle smile and his own broken expression?

"I can't," he says. What happens when he stops pretending? Will there be anything of him left if he lets go of this, if he gives up these last vestiges of who he is supposed to be? "I can't, Ginny."

Her voice is so patient, so kind, but there is a fire in her eyes, the same as there would have been if she wasn't just a picture now, the strength that made her such a great wife and mother, such a magnificent person. "You have to, Harry. There's no one left to pretend for."

His breath shudders, dry sobs wracking him, and his voice no longer holds the lie he had formed it into. "Why did you leave me, Ginny?" He sounds broken, no, he is broken, his heart, his soul aches for the woman who is no longer living. "You left me alone. Alone with eternity." It is an accusation, but his wife has known him for too long to get angry now.

"I didn't leave you alone," she reminds him. "Hermione–" he cuts her off.

"Hermione is an old woman now! It won't be long before she leaves me too!" Anguish, pain, and fury at the hand he has been dealt, too much feeling for the feeble old man he has become—no, for the old man he thinks he should have become.

As the grief and rage pour through him, the years fade away from his face and body, the illusion he has been maintaining for decades fading away until he is young again—as desperately as he wishes to hold onto the lie, to keep pretending, Ginny is right, what is the point when there is no one left to pretend for?

His wife stares back at him, frowning, and her eyes are no longer sad but thoughtful, even if he doesn't quite notice, his face now buried in his hands. It is too much, all too much.

"Harry."

He does not look up, jaw clenched as he shakes his head, denying whatever she wants to say—he gave up the illusion of age, didn't he? The illusion that he is still normal, however, such a thing can be defined. What more can his dead wife want from him?

"Harry." Her voice isn't gentle anymore—it's stern, hard and maybe even a little angry.

Still, he does not look up, shoulders shaking, his eyes still refusing to cry.

"Harry James Potter, look at me!"

"What?" he barks, head jerking up to glare at her, even if something in him is taken aback at the light of determination in her eyes.

"You won't be alone, Harry. No, listen to me!" she snaps when he opens his mouth to refute her. "I think I know what you have to do. You just need to listen to me."

Frowning, his being almost too resigned to stir with any sort of hope, even if his wife's eyes spark fire at him, he eventually nods.

And Ginny tells him her idea.

Harry has never been sure when the idea really sank into his mind as a reality rather than just a thought—it didn't seem right to say that he suspected when he noticed he wasn't aging, even if he had gone on to find ways to hide the fact. No, it wasn't then, nor had it been for many years after.

Sometimes he'd thought it was the Hallows—the stories said that together they made one the Master of Death, didn't they? But that did not seem right either, not when he had dropped the Stone in the Forest that night, hidden away the Wand—certainly, he still had the Cloak, but how he could be Master of Death when he was no longer in possession of the other two Hallows?

It was Ginny, his wonderful Ginny, who made him think of it, though it had been a joke to one of his more serious questions on the subject—if he was the Master of Death, where was this Death he was supposed to be Master of? She hadn't known until so very recently what impact those words had had.

Because she had been quite right. No Death ever showed up to be Master of, no matter how often he called for the creature.

It had still taken him years to come to the conclusion though, and even then, he hadn't wanted to accept the explanation his mind came to—it was preposterous, after all. Harry Potter, most known for living—Death?

But now, now…

Ginny is gone, only enchanted portraits of her left, and all his friends have passed beyond the Veil before her, all save one, and he is young and vital as ever, with no signs of that changing.

Perhaps, if Ginny hadn't suggested it, if he was only a little less desperate, it would have taken him years—centuries, millennia—to accept, but he is accepting it now because if he does not, he will miss out on this opportunity. And he cannot miss out, because if there is any way to prevent it, Harry Potter will not simply sit back and accept the death of his last friend.

First, he goes to the Forest—the ease with which he finds the Stone seems a confirmation of things he had long wanted to sweep under a mental rug and never think on again. But this is not the time for that.

Collecting the Wand gives him a pain in his chest, quickly ignored in favor of completing the task and moving to the next step with all speed.

He finds her sitting out in the garden of her oldest daughter's home, where she went to live after Ron's passing three years ago. Her legs are covered with a blanket, her now white hair less bushy than it had once been. There is a book in her lap, but she is not reading, her eyes instead staring out into the distance.

"Hermione," he says, and her head turns in his direction, her eyes not immediately focusing on him as it takes her a moment to come out of her thoughts.

Even when they do, it seems to take several more seconds for her to process what she is seeing—because hadn't she just seen him, not but a few hours ago as an old man of nearly a hundred, asking if he wanted company after burying his wife?

"Harry?" she says questioningly, and he almost flinches at how old her voice sounds, somehow so much worse than seeing her age.

"Yes." He comes closer, standing in front of her because he doesn't think he could sit, his muscles are too tight.

It is a relief to see her eyes rapidly narrow after widening, her mind as quick as ever, and she asks, because Hermione always asks, "How?"

"That's… actually why I'm here, sort of," he says, nearly fidgeting with the Cloak draped over his arm, the Stone set in the ring on his finger, the Wand out of his reach in his pocket. "I have an idea, but…"

Hermione has noticed the familiar item on his arm, the ring on his finger, and he knows she has guessed, because she says, "Is it the Hallows?" her eyes widening again.

He has to shake his head because he can practically feel it now, in his gut, his bones, in the Hallows themselves. That is not the right explanation.

"No, I don't think so."

She thinks about this for several moments, but either she comes up with nothing, or she does not like what she does think, because she questions, as she always questions.

"What do you think it is then?"

"I think… that I'm not the Master. I think I'm… the Death the Hallows are supposed to make you the Master of." He almost thinks she will snort—because it is ridiculous, surely it is—but she doesn't. Instead, her face turns thoughtful.

"Explain."

So he does, all the thoughts and moments that have led him to think this, the experiments he has done in those times he has wished to try to prove himself wrong. And at the end, he tells her of his talks with Ginny, of what her portrait has suggested. Then, though he just wants to shove them at her and make her take them, to see if they are right, he asks—asks if she will take the Hallows and become the Master.

"Because that's the real proof, isn't it?" he says. "If I am, then… well, you know."

Hermione nods, agreeing rather than accepting, and is quiet for a long moment. After knowing her for so long, he does not worry that it is a silence of hesitation, and gives her time to think. It does not take long, after all.

"Alright." The word lifts a great burden from Harry, yet his stomach still dances with trepidation. Handing her the Cloak and the Stone, he pulls out the Wand, waiting patiently while she disarms him and takes it for herself.

It seems a rather anticlimactic moment when she is in possession of all three. Nothing happens, both remaining as they are, one young, one old, and Harry has to stop himself from worrying.

"Test it," he tells her, and Hermione seems to be in the process of thinking how to do so.

"Stand on one foot," she says, her voice almost teasing, and Harry laughs, doing so more out of the habit of obeying his friend than for any other reason. At least, he thinks.

Hermione issues two other joking commands that he laughingly follows, before she gets serious, biting her lip as she thinks of something, anything to prove that what Harry thinks is false. Finally, her face uncertain, her lip still trapped between her teeth, she looks at him, and he holds his breath, waiting for her real test.

When it comes, her voice is so quiet he almost can't hear it, having to lean closer to catch the words.

"Make me young again," she whispers, Harry's pulse quickening with the words. Something goes fuzzy in his head as he pulls out his wand—eleven inches, holly, phoenix feather—and before he begins speaking words that aren't words at all, he already knows. As old power rises, wraps around Hermione, he knows.

As Hermione, young once more, stands, disbelief morphing to joy on her face, and throws her arms around him, Harry knows—Ginny was right. He won't spend eternity alone. As he returns his last friend's embrace, he closes his eyes, tears—at last—rolling down his face.


End file.
